7- Wake, Shower, Breakfast, Devos
9:30- Discipleship Lecture
11:15- Tea Break
11:30- Discipleship Lecture
1- Lunch
2- Discipleship Lecture
4:30- Free Time
6- Dinner
7- Clean up
11- Lights out
This may sound hectic, but compared to the last two weeks this schedule has been very forgiving! We were given most evenings off which was nice. I was able to Get back into the routine of going to the prayer room before bed. So yes Monday-Wednesday was fun and i learned a lot at the discipleship course, but the most exciting things happened on Thur and Friday of last week!
Thursday
So, every Thursday morning is prayer morning where people from all over meet here at North Dock and we pray for the different projects going on within world horizons, or for different missionaries that may come and do a presentation and what not. It was a great time of fellowship. But the thing that I was looking forward to all day (not that i wasnt looking forward to prayer...) was playing football with some kids from my Community Placement (the place where i volunteer from 10-5 on Fridays). So meesh (michelle) and i walked there and met up with Nigel (you'll hear more about him in a min) and Paul (the director of Wallich-the place i volunteer). I ended up playing 5 on 5 football with a group of drug and alcohol addicts for nearly 2 hours. It was cool to earn their respect and finally feel more accepted (the past 2 weeks it has been hard to talk/connect to the kids at Wallich b/c they are very independent).
Friday
Soooo... The next day I showed up at the residents center and hung out with Nigel(who works there) for most of the day. I could tell that Nigel was a Christian by some of the things he had said the other day when i was there, so i was excited to ask him about it. When I did I was BLOWN AWAY by his testimony! (Message me on FB if you would like to hear his whole story, but i will always remember it!! dont be shy). It was a relief to have a passionate Christian brother working along side me in, what seemed like, a Godless place of fear and frustration. I had an awesome opportunity to go to lunch with one of the addict residence Mikey! He was super friendly and easy to talk to. So, for the first time (out of the 3 times i have been to Wallich) i was beginning to see God's plan for me there.
Then, FRIDAY NIGHT EVANGELISM! Again God decides to blow me out of the water. We show up at the church at 8pm to set up the room that we invite the homeless/drunk people to come and have tea/coffee and biscuits(cookies for you americans). Right when the doors open a man called Justin walks in and i pick up conversation with him. He was drunk (although it was hard for me to tell, maybe "merry" is a better word for it) but the first thing he says to me is "if the man Bryan comes tonight i am going to hurt him, he is always judging me saying i am a sinner." Bryan is one of the guys that usually comes to evangelize and for some reason i said "Is that what Jesus would do?" I dont know why i thought he would care what Jesus would do, but i said it anyway. He responded by going into sermon mode and preaching to me about Jesus. We ended up talking right through prayertime (where we pray that God would do big things during tonights evangelism) and though i was still a little scared that i was going to get socked in the face if i said anything about sin we ended up talking for the next 3 hours. Turns out he was a preacher for 10 years and then let the demon of alcohol get to him. To make a long story short we took a walk around downtown Llanelli and talked.
We got to the point where instead of him doing all the talking, i began to ask questions and sharing why i believed in certain things. And by this point i was fairly certain we were on good terms (i.e. i wasnt too worried about being attacked) so i went ahead an laid it all out there. He kept talking about being a christian and how no one can take that away from him. He preached to thousands of people and converted many people. And i challenged him by saying "you dont know you are a christian by saying 'i once accepted jesus into my heart, i once preached and converted people, i once did really good things' but you know you are a christian by choosing DAILY to pick up your cross, deny yourself, and follow after Him." He understood and i asked if he was satisfied with his current life, he said no. i asked if he was satisfied back in the day when he was preaching, and he said yes. So right there i asked "do you believe God has the power to heal you of this alcohol addiction?" He said yes. So I stared praying for him right there on the street. I had only said maybe 10 words when a big black van drove slowly by and someone started yelling "HEY, stop Kissing, hey you twooo!" The devil was obviously trying to intervene. But it threw me off guard and i didnt really know what to say. The van stopped a little way down the road and just watched us. Justin said to me "Dont be intimidated" which was really powerful to me.
We walked across the street to the church and i wasnt sure if Justin still wanted to pray for the addiction, or if i missed that opportunity or what. But Justin walked in, touched Steve's (on of the elders of the church) shoulder and said "george (he obviously forgot my name because he called me george all night, i was going to tie this in better to make it much more funny... but i got too into the story) here wants to pray, can we use the prayer room?" So the three of us went into the prayer room and steve and i laid out hands on Justin and prayed. At one point Justin got down on his knees and put his hands out and was speaking in a different language. We finished and to be honest i am not sure how much Justin will remember, b/c even after we prayed he said he was ready for a few more pints, but i know that there was a reason for me to spend my friday night with that man Justin.
PRAYER:
-DT (development training) this week!!! Super intense so pray for sleep and for safety
-Placement! i have to decide FOR SURE in a little over a week. So pray that i have some CRAZY revelation this week! haha and if not that i will make a wise decision :D
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PRAYERS AND SUPPORT!!! PRAYERS ARE BEING ANSWERED AND LIVES ARE BEING CHANGED! sorry this post is so long :/
No comments:
Post a Comment